Sunday, July 23, 2017

The Rubbish Map of the Week

Litterati is an iOS and Android app which is used for logging the location of litter found on the streets. Using the app anyone can take a quick photo and report any litter that they find. The photo is then added to the worldwide Litterati interactive map.

The app has already proved hugely successful around the world. The Litterati interactive map already has nearly half a million reports in the United States and over 100,000 reports in Europe. After taking photos users of the app are meant to dispose of the litter in a responsible manner. If they do this then that is a lot of litter which has already been removed from the world's streets.

Users of the app are also encouraged to log the type of litter (plastic, cigarettes, cans, glass etc) and the manufacturers and brands of the litter. Marlboro, MacDonalds and Coke are the three leading brands so far whose discarded cigarette butts, wrapping and cans have been found on the streets around the world. This suggests that these brands have a lot more work to do to encourage their customers to not litter the streets.

Litterati claim that users have also created groups to crowd-source the identification and cleaning of particularly dirty neighborhoods in their towns and cities. City authorities have also used the app to identify the levels of cigarette butts on the streets in order to determine tax levels to charge on cigarettes.